Friday, April 08, 2011

Colorful Character of Old SLO

I've been noticing that other people have been posting photos the old times in their hometowns, so I figured I'd do the same with my favorite photo from Old San Luis Obispo (SLO).

This is a photo of the H & H Bar at 862 Monterey Street in San Luis Obispo taken in the early 1900s. I love the photo for the man in the middle, John Baptista Romo, one of Old SLO Town's more colorful characters. He was a cowboy on the Hearst Ranch, but liked to dress this way, even when not working. The pistol he sports was used for shooting squirrels on the ranch. When he was older, he took to wearing medals and decorative items on his chest just for the attention. Seems like when I was a kid, there were still a few of these colorful holdouts to be found, but not very many any more. Where did they all go?

The H & H vanished when Prohibition came along, and Romo died in 1963. Any of you have any memories of Old Coots from your childhood?

9 comments:

RTD
said...

A couple of observations:

Looks like they missed the spittoon more than hitting it.

His pistol is an automatic pistol instead of a revolver.

The one box on the Left side looks like it says OLD GROW DISTILLERY. I have heard of OLD CROW, but never OLD GROW.I GOGGLED OLD GROW and found this OLD GROW DISTILLERY,. IN. COUNTY, KY. But could not find much else about it.